The Darling Buds of May
by Luminary Clock
Summary: Milah reflects on her youth and the real reason that she married Rumplestilskin.


Disclaimer: I do not own Once Upon a Time

My desires have always been simple. I wanted flowers that never lost their scent, skies that were eternally cloudless and blue. I wanted cool lakes to swim in, summers that lasted forever, and eventually I wanted to marry a man who adored me and would care for me.

My earliest memories were of catching frogs in the creek with the village boys and racing my sisters in the fields were the sheep grazed. I was the youngest, but by my tenth name day I could outrun them all and by my fourteenth name day I could outrun all the other children in the village, both the boys and the girls.

"You're like the wind, Milah," they used to laugh breathlessly when I beat them.

My favorite place was the lake in the hills beyond the village. It was a frequent swimming hole for the local children and young adults in the summer. By the time that I was sixteen, I could hold my breath for nearly two minutes. I felt the most alive when I was hovering in the frigid, clear water just above the bottom of the lake. I lived for those moments, when my hair was spread out around my head like a dark sunflower and the cold water was piercing every inch of my body. I would watch the minnows dart through the green grasses as they moved in tandem with the gentle current, and the sunbeams dance on the pebbled lake bottom. It was like a secret kingdom only visible to me.

I would stay under until the squeezing in my chest became unbearable and then I would rise to the surface out of necessity. Once I stayed too long watching the glimmering gold sunbeams and the silvery minnows and I forgot to surface. It wasn't until I heard my sisters' muffled screams and felt my oldest sister pulling my hair that I was awakened from my reverie. Lyra, my oldest sister, was furious with me. That is the only time that I remember hearing her raise her voice at anyone. I stood with my other two sisters, shivering, while Lyra screamed at me. When she told my parents about the incident, they did not yell, but they did forbid me from going to the lake. I remedied the situation by going at dawn, when no one in my house was awake.

When I turned twenty-one, my parents were determined to find a husband for me by my next name day. I was the last of their precious little girls to remain unmarried and at home, and they wanted to ensure that I would not become a spinster. Throughout my adolescence, my mother would say things like ""What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security". My mother was full of wise phrases. She would proudly recite one on every topic from the prospect of marriage to raising children to the harvest.

I had long since vowed never to use these sayings on my own children.

There were several men in my village that desired to marry me, but I wanted none of them. No one in the village was what I wanted. I wanted security but I also wanted excitement, love, and passion. The young men of the village were fine for racing and catching frogs with, but they were all as dull as bullfrogs themselves.

Jack, the butcher' son, used to come calling every week with a grin on his face and a bouquet of my favorite yellow jonquils in his hands. He had the intelligence of a brick, but I enjoyed his visits. Jack was always good for a laugh. Louis, the baker's son, always brought fresh bread. Visitors could always tell when he had come calling! Rumplestilskin, the spinner, also came. That surprised all of us. He was polite, soft-spoken, and he usually kept to himself. Lyra suggested that he was lonely, and that is why he wanted a wife. I replied that was well and good, but I had no intentions of being that wife. Rumplestilskin seemed like a decent enough man, and there was little enough danger of him striking me, as my second sister's husband was wont to do on occasion, but Rumplestilskin was the type of man who would cross the bridges that he came to, but would give up as soon as he came to a river with no bridge.

I wanted a man who would ford every river that he came across, bridges be damned.

It was at my lake that spring that I met _him_. I remember that it was morning. It might have been before dawn. I had just surfaced, and I was startled to see him there. I remember noticing that he had clean fingernails, eyes the color of the cloudless blue sky that I loved, and that he smelled faintly of jonquils. He was looking for a well, he told me, and he had gotten lost. But, he added softly, he was glad that he had.

For the rest of the spring and that summer, I spent almost every day with him. We would walk together in the fields or swim in the lake. On Midsummers' Day, for the first time, we went into deeper water.

Once, when we had been dripping wet and resting on the banks of the lake after our rather exhausting swim, two swans had glided by on the rippling surface. Just a few feet away from us, the breathtaking white birds paused and touched beaks. We watched them in awe.

"Swans mate for life, Milah," he had told me with a gentle smile. "Like us."

I had smiled back and kissed him with an intensity that knocked him onto his back. When his face, his voice, and even his name had long faded from my memory, I still remembered those words. At the time, I thought that it was the most beautiful phrase anyone had ever uttered.

I knew soon after, when the trees were turning bonzes and reds, and the days were becoming darker and colder. I was playing with Lyra's twin daughters who had just learned to walk, when I suddenly knew. I became cold and sweaty and my heart began to rattle in my chest like a caged bird. When my sister noticed and expressed concern, I told her that I felt unwell and I left her cottage as quickly as I could. It was already evening, but I hurried over to his house in the next village over. I had never been there before, but I was able to recognize it right away from what he had told me. It was the center of the village and it was the only cottage in the village that was three stories high. He smiled when he came to the door, but his expression dimmed and had turned stony by the time that I was done speaking. He told me that he was sorry, but his parents would never approve a match to a blacksmith's daughter. Then he shut the door, leaving me to find my way home in the dark.

So much for the swans.

My parents were surprisingly calm, as I stood before them, fighting back tears. This complicated things, they admitted, but it would be all right. We needed to find me a husband for me and I needed to marry him quickly before he realized that I had been used.

My mother gave me an extra serving of stew that night and my father tousled my hair like he had done when I was a little girl. It made me feel like I was burning inside. I sat in my usual chair in silence. Everything around me was familiar: My mother serving us stew while she chattered about the latest gossip that she had heard that day. (I cringed to think that I might soon be the topic of gossip at my neighbors' dinner tables). My father listened patiently while he chewed. Our brown tabby lay in front of the hearth, daintily licking herself. The teakettle was whistling, outside the nightingales were trilling, and from my seat I was staring directly at the tapestry that my grandmother had made. I hadn't really looked at the image of the maiden and the snowy white unicorn against the red background in years, but that night it blurred until all that I could see was red.

This was the house that I had grown up in, everything that I had ever known. And yet, in one moment, it was all changed. And I knew that no amount of wishing or crying would bring it back to what it once was.

A fortnight after my announcement, my father came into the house where I was knitting and told me that Rumplestilskin had agreed to be my husband and we would be wed in a week's time. Of everyone who had expressed interest in becoming my husband, Rumplestilskin was the most willing and the most able to provide for me and my child. I went up to the bedroom that I used to share with Lyra and cried. When I ran out of tears I just lay on my bed, aware that I was acting like a child and yet not really caring.

It's funny in a way: I had dreamed of my wedding day since I was a little girl and yet I remember so little of it. The day passed in a blur, leaving me with fuzzy images of a cobalt blue sky, singing bluebirds, gripping my father's arm as I walked down the aisle, and stepping on the yellow petals that my nieces had enthusiastically thrown as first time flower girls.

I waited a fortnight after our wedding to tell Rumplestilskin that we would be having a child. I was not prepared for his reaction. In an instant, a smile had lit his normally stoic face, and he grabbed me in a hug that was surprisingly strong, considering his slender body. I had never seen him so happy.

The pregnancy and birth were relatively easy, based on the horror stories that every woman in the village who had ever been pregnant enthusiastically related to me as soon as I started to show. I went into labor on a warm afternoon in May, and my son was born just after dawn. The birth was a few weeks sooner than expected, but babies come when babies come, as my mother would nod and say with the wisdom of one who has been through four births. We named the screaming, red bundle Baelfire, which had been my husband's first choice for a boy. It was a fine name for any child, even a spinner's son. Privately, I found the name ironic, though I could never tell anyone.

The summer after my son's birth I could not find any time to go to my lake or go to the fields. I had hardly enough energy to drag myself out of bed in the morning, much less run and swim.

Rumplestilskin proved to be an attentive father. He could anticipate Baelfire's cries before the little boy ever uttered a sound. He knew when Bae was crying because he was hungry, when he was frightened, when he was tired. Sometimes I would wake in the night and see Rumplestilskin sitting in the rocking chair, holding Baelfire and gently singing the baby lullabies. I would think _No—no he is __**mine**__, not yours. You have no right to touch him_. But when my son was in my arms I would see how small he was, and he would usually choose that moment to let out a blood-curdling wail. When he did that, no amount of pleading or soft words would get him to stop. I would hand him to whoever was closer, my mother or Rumplestilskin, as quickly as I could. They could always get him to stop crying.

"Why did you want me here?" I asked him one day about two months after Baelfire's birth. "Why did you ask my father for my hand?"

"Living by yourself gets lonely," he replied. "And I always liked your smile." I simply nodded in response. I had been expecting a response like that. Rumplestilskin had proven to be a good provider for me and Bae, but still I did not want him. I wanted to love and be loved with ferocity, and I knew that my soft-spoken husband was not capable of such intense passion.

During the beginning of our marriage, Rumplestilskin would come up and kiss me when I was hanging the laundry or making dinner. They were halfhearted, timid attempts, as if he expected me to push him away. Embarrassed for him, I would tell him to stop, under the pretense that I was too involved with my task to reciprocate. I would step away, and try not to think of the bold, passionate kisses that I had once known. After working in the field all day, he would sometimes bring me my favorite jonquils. I would thank him and put them in water, not having the heart to tell him that they were almost dead after he had picked them that morning.

I would occasionally feel rushes of affection for my husband, when he gave me flowers or got my baby to stop crying with a smile and a lullaby sung in a low, throaty voice. Other times I would lie awake while he slumbered beside me, and my heart would swell with such hatred that I was surprised that the force of it did not wake him. When news of the possibility of an Ogre war buzzed through the village like a cluster of bees, my heart filled with joy instead of dread. If Rumplestilskin fought and became a war hero, at least our standing in the village would improve. And in the more likely event that he died, I could be an honored widow and free once again. As summer died and autumn came with the threat of a war looming closer, I began to feel less claustrophobic in my own home. My life went on as it had since I married, but now I had hope that it could get better at last.

Sometimes in the nights, I thought that I could smell jonquils.


End file.
